A Relaxing Weekend in London

Traveling really reminds you the true value of a full night's sleep and things like showers and clean laundry. 

I walked from the hostel to Waverley to catch a bus, working on about three hours of sleep. I took a bus to the airport. I caught a plane to London Stansted. I took a bus to the London City Center. I took the tube to my hostel. All while dragging my ridiculous backpacks. 

I had no plans for London. I had been to London several times before, on family vacations and for soccer tournaments. As well as a trip with my fellow Scottish Parliament Interns! So I was not too concerned about doing any of the touristy things, having done them. I just like being in the city and was perfectly content to hang out in London for a couple days with no pressure to rush from sight to sight. 

I had been traveling for almost four and a half weeks by the time I arrived in London. I had not had a full night of sleep since I left California. I never felt fully clean either. Showering and laundry are a little more difficult to come by while constantly on the move. I had put countless miles on my Converse and my feet hurt. I had been constantly on the move since I arrived. I loved it though and I thrived on it. 

After four and a half weeks though, it was time to spend a day or two catching up on sleep and resting my feet. I needed to recharge and unwind. I wanted to catch up on writing, both my blog and postcards. I just wanted to enjoy a relaxing weekend in a cool city. I was also looking forward to seeing friends I hadn't seen in awhile.

I had picked the hostel out of proximity to Erik's flat. By luck, the hostel ended up being in a very convenient location. (Sometimes it's hit or miss when guessing location and distance.) It was very close to King's Cross Station and also very close to Erik's flat, which made it convenient to hang out with Erik and Helle and also to get around London. 

I had only booked the hostel for Friday night because it and every other hostel in and around London was booked for Saturday night. 

Most hostels have a luggage room due to the high turnover nature of hostels. Guests frequently arrive and leave at times inconvenient to check in and check out. I've seen a variety of luggage rooms in terms of size and security. This one by far was the most chaotic. When I put my backpacks on the first shelf in the back right corner, I was able to walk directly there. When I picked them up it looked like this: 

I had to literally climb over and on top of at least twenty suitcases and backpacks of different heights and distances from each other to get to my backpacks. It was quite the struggle and I stumbled and clawed and fought my way through the haphazard piles of backpacker luggage. I broke a sweat. 

There was a grimy coed bathroom next to the luggage room. I struggled to figure out how to let the least possible amount of surface area of my belongings touch the damp floor. A very flatulent young man shuffled barefoot out of one of the stalls in nothing but a pair of skimpy boxer briefs. He grimaced at me apologetically before rushing out of the bathroom. 

I did the best I could with what I had. I changed my clothes. I used wet wipes for a quick shower substitute. I reapplied deodorant and makeup. (Sometimes if the situation got especially dire I would seek out a franchise of The Body Shop, found commonly in international train stations, and try the free samples of lotion and perfume. I unfortunately did not have that option in this case.)

I walked over to Erik's flat. Erik, Helle, and their friend from Edinburgh, Neil, and I went to lunch at a sushi place called Yo! (exclamation mark included. I like sushi, but not that much.) Yo! was a very brightly colored restaurant that played very loud, peppy music. There was a conveyor belt with multicolored plates of sushi that sped around the restaurant. You just pulled whatever ones you wanted off and then paid for the stack of plates at the end. The conveyor belt moved quickly, though, and I kept missing the California rolls and having to wait for them to come around again. London is a very international city packed full of all sorts of cuisines.

We then went to meet up with Neil's friend at the Shard, which is a new, almost complete shard shaped skyscraper in London. The plan was to have a glass of champagne at the top of the shard. It sounded really cool. Helle and I were talking about how it seemed like one of those things you do for the experience. Like, "ah, yes, I enjoyed the view of London from the top of the Shard while enjoying a glass of champagne." It seemed very posh. There was some dissuasion over the price of entry though and we decided to go check out a market and a pub instead. When I return to London to visit, I would like to do that though. It makes me glad to know that there is always more stuff to do in the cities I've been to so that I can have a reason to return.

Drinking culture is quite different in the UK than from what I was used to in Isla Vista. There are different rules and styles to picking up rounds of drinks for friends and different rules for keeping track of whose turn it is. I tried my best to keep up with the different rules without usurping the order or offending people with my inability to grasp their system. 

The system of buying drinks in Isla Vista, in my experience, was based mostly on the assumption that it would all balance out in the end. Generally, whenever I attended parties or kickbacks, alcohol was generously provided by the hosts. It was kind of a pay it forward system. If one of your friends hosts continually, then you can bring over wine or beer to share with everyone to balance it out. When I went out for drinks with friends in IV or downtown Santa Barbara we would all primarily just buy our own drink for ourselves. The only thing we would ever take turns buying was pitchers of beer. Taking turns buying pitchers wasn't really done in any order, it was just whoever offered. And it seemed to balance out in the end.

I enjoyed very much going out to pubs with Erik and his friends. But between rounds was stressful. It was more of a how do I know when it's my turn? Do I volunteer or is it in like alphabetical order or something? What happens if I accidentally order a beer that is more expensive than everyone else's? What happens if I change my drink for this next round? What happens if I want to sit out a round of drinks? The round buying order and routine seemed more strict and everyone else seemed to be following and keeping track. I had so many questions but I ended up just mouthing to Erik, "my turn?" before each round and he would shake his head until he told me, "you can get this round." Finally. I remembered this a bit from when I studied abroad before. Parties were always BYOB which surprised me at first.

Someday I will learn the British drinking system. As well as the correct cheek kiss combo. And also maybe I'll remember to stop smiling at strangers, because it's creepy everywhere else except for the US, apparently.

After the pub, Helle wanted to check out the Poppy Memorial at the Tower of London. So we walked along the Thames over to the Tower of London.

It was very cool to think as we were walking through the city talking and hanging out together that I was with a friend from back home in California and a friend I had met while studying abroad in Edinburgh in a foreign city together. It felt very cool and adult like. 

The Poppy Memorial at the Tower of London was beautiful.The moat was filled with almost one million ceramic poppies in honor of those who died serving the UK in WWI. Part of the Tower of London had ceramic poppies pouring out of the wall like a waterfall. Everyone gathered around the Tower of London to see the poppies and hear someone read out a list of names of those who died serving.

Each November, people in the UK take part in a Poppy Appeal. I remembered the same thing from my time at parliament. You could buy a small plastic red poppy and the money would be donated to a fund that helped soldier's families, if I remember correctly. Many people pinned the poppies to their clothing and wore them. You could also buy white poppies, which symbolized peace.

We headed back to Erik's flat. Neil is a professional head chef at a swanky restaurant in Edinburgh. He made us a delicious dinner completely from scratch. The main course was pork, potatoes, spinach, and pearl onions in a pineapple chutney. Dessert was berries and cream with caramel and honeycomb from scratch with basil. It was incredible.

I went back to my hostel and met my hostelmates. The lady I was sharing a bunk with was an Italian lady who was attending an English Second Language school in London for a few weeks and was very friendly and eager to try out her English. The other six people in the room were members of Iceland's Women's National Hockey Team. 

"Oh! So are you guys training for the Olympics?" I asked. 

"Oh no," the girl I was talking to laughed. "We're not that good."

They were all very friendly, tall, pale, and blonde. It was their first time in London. They had come to London for a girl's shopping weekend. All of them had come back to the hostel room with armfuls of shopping bags from H&M, Primark, Zara, and more. They had giant empty suitcases that they filled with the day's shopping. I felt very short and grimy with my limited clothing choices in comparison. 

The next day I packed up and stripped my bed and went to meet up with a friend at the National Museum. A feat made more difficult without cell phone access.

I worked with Lena at Portola at UCSB. Lena is studying abroad for the year at the University of Kent, on recommendation from a mutual friend who studied abroad there at the same time I was interning in Scotland. She came up to London from Canterbury to get lunch with me. Lena treated me to a lunch of chicken burgers near the National Museum. We walked around Oxford Street. The only 30 minutes it rained my whole trip was when we were walking down Oxford Street.

I then went and met up with Erik, Helle, and Neil. We went out and walked around Soho and Chinatown. We got Chinese food for dinner. It was very cool being out in the city at night, walking around with friends and talking. London is a huge, lively city. It is packed with people and buildings and lights and traffic. There were so many people out and about milling up and down the streets, shopping, pub hopping, going to restaurants. It's a real city city.

We then headed back via tube to their apartment. 

Erik and Helle generously let me crash on their couch so I wouldn't be wandering around London streets hostelless all night. By the time I had woken up the next morning, Helle had already been awake for awhile to work on a project. She had also gone to Starbucks and brought everyone back coffee. It was one of the most wonderful things ever to wake up to a grande mocha with whipped cream. I didn't even have to get off the couch to indulge in sugary caffeinated goodness.

Erik, Helle, and Neil were going to an NFL game at Wembley that afternoon. Erik kept listing off things that I could do while they were at the game after I told him, "I don't have anything planned for tomorrow, I'm not doing anything."

"Are you sure?" Erik asked, seeming concerned that I would be bored or lonely. "I mean Oxford Street is pretty cool if you want to go shopping. There's the touristy sites downtown, I can show you which tube stop anything is at."

"I just really want to spend tomorrow walking around, maybe go to a coffee shop and write for a bit, relax, you know?"

Neil understood me. "There's some great coffee shops in Chelsea. Perfect for just sitting and hanging out for awhile."

I was very content with hanging out for the weekend, planless. I rarely had a plan, which had its advantages and disadvantages. I ended up spending the afternoon walking around the Kings Cross Area, window shopping, getting food and coffee, and writing. I checked back into the hostel.

Erik invited me back over for a drink after the game. I spent the evening hanging out with Erik, Helle, and Neil at Erik's flat.

Even though I had no plans in London, even my low key weekend in London seemed too short. I had a lot of fun hanging out in the city with old friends.

The next morning I woke up excruciatingly early (you think I would have learned by this point in the trip how painful it is to take 6 am flights and trains) and headed to my last stop of this trip: Stockholm.

A City of Sudden Vistas

I was very excited to go back to Edinburgh. I hadn't been back since I moved back after studying abroad there.

I am in love with this city. I missed Edinburgh a lot and I loved being there, but I especially missed living there. I missed the Gothic sandstone buildings, the overcast skies, and misty air. I missed the hustle and bustle of a lively gray Scottish city. I missed the beauty of Edinburgh. I missed Nando's and outstanding breakfasts and mochas that used real cream. But I also missed my awesome roommates, coming home to my flat overlooking Hillside Gardens each evening, going out to pubs with friends, my morning walk to Parliament, and living and being in a city that is so uniquely beautiful. Edinburgh is one of the few places in my life from day one felt like home.

“This is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again,” Alexander McCall Smith

This trip to Edinburgh was very indulgent in nostalgia. I had two goals: revisit all the things I missed and see some places I did not see while I lived there. Visiting Edinburgh was way overdue and I was excited to go back.


Beautiful view on the descent into Edinburgh Airport!



I was furious because the weather was beautiful the whole time I was there. Chilly, yes. But I desperately wanted rain. It rained the entire time I lived in Edinburgh. Every day. Even days the sun feebly peeked out, it rained. Sometimes it even rained when it was sunny. Coming form drought filled California, I missed the rain. It was clear and sunny the whole time.



Once I got to the city I had lunch at The Pasty Shop in Waverley Train Station. It sells scalding hot turnovers. I got a creamy chicken, corn, and potato pasty and ate it on my walk to the hostel. My hostel was in Grassmarket, an area of Edinburgh that I was not very familiar with. For dinner I got Nando's from the same Nando's Julianne, Oriel, and I ate at before the Ed Sheeran concert we went to at Usher Hall. Nando's is great, it's so spicy it makes your taste buds burn and fall off and your nose sweat, but it's delicious.

 The hostel I stayed in was awesome. Everyone I met in the hostel was a solo traveler looking to make friends. I stayed in a four person dorm and befriended two of the other girls, one from Switzerland and one from Australia. The hostel had a restaurant and a bar and ran events every night. It would have been perfect had I been traveling in a city I had never been to and was looking for company to explore the city with. What I really wanted out of my trip to Edinburgh was a very selfish trip. I wanted to walk where I wanted when I wanted and take my time. Having lived there for four months, I was very comfortable in the city and did not mind being by myself. I did take part in some of the hostel activities, however, to get the full hostel backpacker solo traveler experience. 

The first night I was there the hostel ran a pub crawl. It began with 'bar olympics' at the sister hostel down the street. There were about thirty of us at the bar. The first game we played was an incredibly unhygienic box game. It started with an empty cardboard box and you had to pick it up with your mouth without falling over. You couldn't touch your hands or knees to the ground. Each round a bit of cardboard got torn off the box so it got smaller and smaller. 

 Here is a picture in case you didn't believe me

I was left in the top ten before I fell over. Eventually they had to do it with a piece of paper. Not enough people got out so the last round was with a penny. So people were basically licking the floor. I was thankful I had gotten out several rounds before that. 

I befriended an American doing a four month bus tour of Europe and a German from Munich. 

I was talking to the German boy and he told me, "I thought you were German at first. You look German. But now I see the Americanness." 

I laughed. "What gave it away?" I asked. 

"Germans stand very calmly. We do not move much. You move around too much when you talk. You fidget." He was very nice. He was looking to move to Edinburgh. 

I then met two UCSB Tri Delts who were studying abroad in Paris. We hit it off right away talking about UCSB. We taught everyone how to play flip cup. After that people wanted to play beer pong, but there were no ping pong balls. So they played with bottlecaps and coins and it was just about as much of a disaster as you would expect. We then went to two more pubs and then a club. By the time we got to the club I was exhausted and just wanted to go back to the hostel. I had to stick it out though because I didn't want to walk all the way back by myself because we were in a part of Edinburgh that was not as safe as the areas I frequented when I lived there.

The next day my hostelmate and I decided to do the hostel's free walking tour of Edinburgh. I was hoping to do some of the touristy stuff I hadn't seen before in Edinburgh. It was unfortunately a very short tour and difficult to see and hear the guide. I had been to most of the sites before. I just love being in Edinburgh. And it's such an amazing, beautiful city you can't really get sick of looking at it. The architecture is so unique and beautiful that the whole city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


Necessary daily caffeine next to Edinburgh Castle



Before I had gotten to Edinburgh, I made a list on my phone of all the things I wanted to do and see while I was there. It was a mix of new and old sights and restaurants. One of the places I had meant to go the whole time I lived in Edinburgh but never made it to was Calton Hill. Now having been there I am shocked that I never went in the four months I was in Edinburgh. It is right at the end of Princes Street and not difficult to get to at all. I walked around the base of it one way or the other every day to get to work or downtown because my flat was on the far side of Calton Hill. The views from Calton Hill from every side are spectacular. I went there multiple times this trip. 

I'm standing on the National Monument in the previous two pictures. The city ran out of money to complete it so left it unfinished. I think it looks great how it is. It's huge and fun to climb on.

Once the walking tour ended, the majority of the group left to hike Arthur's Seat right then. Instead, I suggested the next item on list of things I meant to do while in Edinburgh but never got around to: climbing the Scott Monument. It's a tall, pointy, Gothic monument on Princes Street that stands out in Edinburgh's skyline and is a useful point of reference. 

I went with two other people from the hostel who were also on the walking tour. We paid four pounds at the base and climbed a narrow and steep twisty cement staircase. There was a museum on each of the four floors. Each floor had a better view of the city.

Old Town

The Balmoral Hotel and Calton Hill

This is what the Scott Monument looks like from the ground.

 

I love this store and I missed it. My roommates and I used to shop here all the time. There aren't any in the US yet and you can't order it online and ship it either. It's like the British version of Forever 21. The clothes are trendy and cheap. Both in quality and in price. The clothes don't last very long, but damn you look good before all the buttons fall off.


Victoria Street

One of the girls I met at the hostel offered to share her dinner with me. The dinner consisted of splitting the above. She was on a super budget trip and had taken buses from city to city. My trip had been a bit more extravagant. "I feel like I'm back in college!" I joked. 

This is the bar/lounge at the hostel. I made lots of friends simply because I had included a deck of cards on my packing list.

The British are not known for their cuisine. In fact, even though I was only in the UK for a week, the greasy, heavy food made me feel sluggish. I missed some of my old favorite restaurants though. One of the main things I missed was breakfast. Man, do the British do breakfast well. Coffee or tea, eggs, beans, toast, potatoes, and grilled tomatoes. It's delicious.

In the wise words of Leslie Knope, "Why would anybody ever eat anything besides breakfast food?"

My second full day in Edinburgh I spent alone. I decided to spend the day just walking around one of my favorite cities in the world. I wanted to start the day off with one of my favorite Scottish meal: breakfast. I walked from my hostel to George's Street and found a restaurant that was open and serving breakfast. I was the only one there and enjoyed my breakfast at a leisurely pace. 

I then spent the next several hours walking with no breaks. There was so much I wanted to see before it got dark and I kept spontaneously adding additional things I wanted to see to my list. I started by walking down Princes Street, down Leith Walk, down London Road, to Hillside Crescent, where my old apartment was. I continued my walk to the grocery store I used to shop at, Sainsbury's, and bought a Cadbury bar and a water to sustain me. I then walked the way I walked every morning over Abbey Mount to Parliament. Edinburgh is a very, very pretty city and I love walking around it. 

Parliament is right at the base of Arthur's Seat. I've hiked Arthur's Seat a few times before. I walked up a little ways. Even though I was in a dress and tights the hike was not too strenuous and I decided to just keep going. I ended up hiking Arthur's Seat in my Converse.

One of the downsides about traveling alone was having no one to take your picture doing cool stuff. Most of the time I would just ask other tourists who looked like they run slower than me (in case they tried to steal my camera). It’s a very high bar for people who move more slowly than me however, so I usually wasn’t too picky. The only problem is most tourists aren’t professional photographers so I have a nice collection of blurry photos and photos that either don’t include me or don’t include the landmark I want in the background. If I didn’t like it, I’d wait a bit, then ask a different tourist. It was a very arduous process.

If there wasn’t anyone around to take my picture, I would resort to using the ten second self timer on my camera or take a selfie on my iPod. This also had mixed results. And because I have no shame, I included a few of those for your viewing pleasure.

The day was so clear and pleasant I even was able to take my coat off in November in Scotland. I was quite shocked.

It was getting late by that point and I had been walking for around five hours. No joke. I decided to watch the sunset from Calton Hill. The hill was packed with people who all had their iPhones out taking pictures of the views. There were a surprising number of people with professional looking telephoto lens cameras as well. Sitting atop Calton Hill watching the sunset with all those people reminded me of evenings in Santa Barbara. I used to run every evening around sunset. I had usually just gotten off work and it was a little cooler in the evenings. I'd usually pause for a few minutes to watch the sunset. The bluffs were always lined with people watching it as well. Some alone, some mid run, and some with friends. It's cool to see people collectively stop to appreciate beautiful events like sunsets together.

It was gorgeous watching the night sky darken over Princes Street. I wandered around Calton Hill, admiring the view from every side as the sunset in the early afternoon.

 

 

 

After a quick dinner at the hostel, I set out to celebrate Bonfire Night with the two girls I had met from the hostel. We set out with the mission of seeing fireworks, but no one really knew where to suggest an organized fireworks event. The last Bonfire Night I spent in Scotland, my roommates and I watched movies in our onesies.

We determined Calton Hill would be our best bet.

I wish I had been better prepared for Bonfire night. It was very cool to witness but it would have been even cooler to partake. There were several groups of people atop Calton Hill. Each individual person had come equipped with their own bottle of wine and package of fireworks. We had arrived empty handed.

It was still fun to watch people light fireworks atop the hill. Some guys kept lighting these Roman Candle type whizzing fireworks that they appeared to have little directional control over. We ended up climbing onto the National Monument and talking with some of the people. We sat up there for awhile overlooking the city. Random individual fireworks would shoot up sporadically from random locations in the city. It was like a pyrotechnic whack-a-mole.







The MSP I worked for while I was in Edinburgh emailed me to see if I was free to meet up. We arranged a time Thursday afternoon. Typical for me, I was running late. I didn't want to show up to the nice Parliament in my muddy Converse, so I wore my only pair of nice shoes I brought and then sprinted down Cowgate in them to make it to Parliament. 

It was really great seeing Stuart again. We got coffee at the Parliament coffee shop and caught up about what we had been up to. We spent time talking about both the recent Scottish Independence Referendum, the recent US election, and Frozen. I was very glad I got a chance to go back to Parliament. I felt very comfortable walking around the building, having spent so much time there a few years ago. Being back there brought back lots of good memories of working with my fellow interns, learning about Scottish politics, and more. I missed walking around the building, getting a mocha from the Parliament coffee stand and drinking it over meetings with my fellow interns, gossiping about politics over baguette corn sandwiches in the cafeteria, sitting in on FMQs and committee meetings, scouring BBC articles, and sitting at my desk overlooking Arthur's Seat. I loved my job at Parliament and it was a huge part of the months I lived in Edinburgh. I'm very glad I got to visit. 

It was dark by the time I left Parliament. I had accumulated so much stuff on my trip so far that I made a trip to Mail Boxes Etc. to send a small box of stuff home. I had planned to do about twice as much stuff as I had time for in Edinburgh. I wanted to spend more time in the city, but first I needed to book my hostel in London as I was leaving the next morning.

I had been booking my trip very last minute as I went along. Most of the time I wasn't quite sure what days I would be where. It was just easier because sometimes I'd change my mind by a day or two or end up going to a different country than originally planned. However, this was also not the best strategy because prices went up sometimes or hostels sold out.

I tried every combination and permutation of hostel settings I could think of, including hostels in neighboring suburbs, expanding my search when even that proved unsuccessful. Every hostel was booked 100% full for Saturday night.

I had not anticipated that would be a problem. I expected expensive, maybe, or low quality maybe, or both. But other than Munich hostels during Oktoberfest and Edinburgh during Fringe Fest, I had never heard of any city running out of hostel beds on a random weekend. Especially in the off season. Hotels were running upwards of 100 pounds a night. At that point I might as well add another city to my list.

I decided that I would be able to figure it out. I messaged Erik back on Facebook letting him know when I planned to arrive and casually mentioned that I was hostelless Saturday night and went out for dinner.

I got Nando's and walked around Edinburgh. By the time I got back to the hostel, Erik had messaged me, offering to let me stay at his and Helle's flat on Saturday night. Relief! I spent the rest of the evening packing.

I find it hard to describe how beautiful Edinburgh is and how much I love the city. I could have used twice as much time in Edinburgh. I probably could have used twice as much time in each place I went to. Even that probably would not have been enough.

Edinburgh is a very pretty city and I highly recommend it to any travelers. Cold, yes. But absolutely worth it.